Chapter two: "Macedonia Nights"

1973

I should know better, six years old and drinking a vodka orange juice. I should know better, falling through an inner tube, drowning and praying for a hand up. I should know better, hanging around my older sisters, while they toke and drink up.

But I am six, and don’t know shit. I go with the flow. My mom is a schizophrenic, and visits Columbia Mental Ward like an amusement park. They fry her brain, and every time she gets back, she is reset, but not. They kill more of her with the shock therapy. "It Is No Quarter" plays faint in the house of Herman Langdord, on Caldwell Street. It still stands today.

You know the irony of the house is, you cannot see it on Google Earth.

Okay, back to the story. My heroines are Liz and Sel. Liz is 15, and Sel is 18. They run the games for me. They take me to the shows, to their parties. They get me drunk while Alice Cooper plays at a college party near Newberry College. Then, we run out the back as the police comes in to break it up. Boones Farm wine is my new fave, and I am only seven. Starting out early, but it’s the early '70s, and it is all on the low. Nobody knows, and better yet, nobody cares.

Liz is my older, brilliant sister. Her style is avant garde, and her neck tie (I don’t know what women wear around the center of their neck which is a fashion plus). Well, her game is better than a Ouija board. Sel, the older, is Athena, and her mixed drinks brings all the C-Boys to her class.

1977

My fifth-grade year is like Detroit with GM. It is poor yet brave, lost but found, developing from a once-great place. To ascertain our present, the past must climb board with us. We can’t ever get away from what brought us to, well, your now chair.

During ’77, "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan was and is an anthem. Probably ever fifth grader knows the lyrics. Please don’t fault me for using present tense.